Blinded With Science
by CompYES
Summary: He really should've known the first day he met her, but it had to have been his mind playing tricks. It was just the ghost of the girl he used to love. Warning: One use of the F-bomb.


Blinded With Science

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Summary: He really should've known the first day he met her, but it had to have been his mind playing tricks. It was just the ghost of the girl he used to love.  
Disclaimer: I do not own Sky High.  
Pairing: Medulla/Sue Tenny (One-Sided), Sue Tenny/Steven Stronghold, Gwen Grayson/Will Stronghold (One-Sided)

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He really should've known. Even with the perfectly styled hair, flawless unblemished skin. Buried under the layers of pink frill and that gaudy social butterfly personality. He should've known that it was Sue Tenny. If there was one person Medulla had ever once considered himself close to, it was Sue Tenny. It was mind boggling to think that he of all people couldn't have picked up on it the minute she took her first step onto school campus as Gwen Grayson.

But it was easy to rationalize all of the blatantly obvious signs. Sue Tenny hadn't been heard from in years since the incident that had gotten her expelled. No one cared what happened to her. Everyone simply accepted that she was a freak. No one liked to acknowledge the fact that the only reason Sue Tenny was driven to such madness was because of the torment she received at the teenaged hands of what would be today's heroes. No one important anyway. Everyone thought her hateful last words, that she'd be back to get revenge _on all of you, all you bastards, all of you_, were just a bunch of hot air. That she was just crazy old "whatshername."

Medulla remembered Sue though, before it was bad. Better than the rest of his peers did. She'd been captain of the science club when he was a freshman and the first person he'd ever felt shared the love he had for science. Even though she wasn't the prettiest, most poised female in Sky High, she was always the one he admired most over the Lana Peaces and the Josie D'Amicos. The worst day in all of his time in Sky High hadn't been any of the swirlies he'd received or any of the times he'd been shoved into lockers. It had been when Sue had left school. The loss of the only person he felt any kinship was gone had left a lasting effect on the young sidekick. It would take him years to realize that the feelings of devastation and loneliness he'd felt at the time hadn't been simple indigestion but heartbreak. Heartbreak because he had truly been in love with Sue Tenny.

That was why fifteen years later, meeting Gwen Grayson was a painful reminder of a woman he'd wanted to forget as easily as she'd probably forgotten him. At first he'd tried to pretend it was a coincidence the girl looked so much like her. When he saw they shared the same power, he theorized that maybe she was a relation of Sue's, or, even as it pained him to think, maybe even her daughter. He met Mr. Grayson many times over the years and he was tight lipped over the existence of the mysterious Mrs. Grayson, ambiguously saying she was gone. Having her work alongside him as his teaching assistant was excruciating because when he watched her, all of the habits Sue had had, he saw Gwen had as well. It bounced him back to when he was just a boy with sweaty palms observing her work with interest going beyond the realms of scientific and more of infatuation.

Only this time, he was a teacher and his feelings were being inappropriately projected onto a student.

Finding out Gwen was in fact Sue didn't make him feel any better. She was still a villain, she was still a minor, and she still felt nothing for him. He'd seen the way she'd swooned over Stronghold Sr. in high school and even the way she peered at the son under her product-laden eyelashes. It seemed no matter what villain persona she tried to be for the world, she'd be like all the women on this earth chasing after the hero. He knew, both in his head and in his heart, he'd never once stood a chance.

There would be days, where he'd sit by himself in his study and flip through old assignments of Gwen Grayson. Everything she'd ever turned into him had gotten full scores. In his entire teaching career at Sky High, he'd never had a student whose grades had ever matched Gwen's in his class. He'd admired her intelligence and dedication to his course. Now he understood why she'd done so well. Why he'd been so drawn to her. When it got to be too much and the memories started to haunt more than help his contemplative mood, he'd shove them to the back of the filing cabinet where he always kept them and try to forget.

Never once, though, did the thought of throwing them away ever cross his mind. No matter how bitter he got that she'd never considered him. No matter how his blood boiled when he thought about her feelings for either model of Stronghold. No matter how illogical it was to continue to "carry a torch" for the woman girl. Fifteen years of loving her was too much, too long, to remove and reprogram out of his system. She was in his oversized head, in his near non-existent heart, and he only had himself to blame. He was the one who put her there in the first place.

He wouldn't forget Sue, but he wouldn't keep letting her hold him back from the life he was living. Of all people, it was Boomer that had managed to drag him out of his lab after he'd retreated to hide from the new version of Sue. The man had shown him the better side of blind dating, even if it was in cheap Chinese food joints. Medulla couldn't argue with the benefit of having a beautiful woman on either arm that would laugh at his science humor. The added amusement of seeing a pouting sore loser Boomer didn't hurt either. It helped him move past the fact the first love of his life was rotting in a cell with a sentence just shy of Baron Battle's. It helped him past the mind-fuck of seeing her as a teenager and wanting her again.

He could see what he'd been missing.

And he didn't really miss it that much.

Not really.

Not anymore.

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AN: I'm still in love with Marie Elizabeth Winstead. _Scott Pilgrim vs. The World_ only made me more in love with her. I wanted to write something weird with Gwen and this popped into my head. I suggest reading it again while listening to "Black Sheep" by Metric. I'd name the fic after the song, but I'm saving the title for something else.


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